Lake Superior State continued a trend on Saturday night, while Ferris State conquered some demons in CCHA action.
Ferris State beat Lake Superior State 2-1 at Taffy Abel Arena in the second game of a weekend set that saw the two schools split.
The Bulldogs picked up a pair of firsts as they picked up their first road win of the young season while also winning for the first time on a Saturday night. For the Lakers, the loss marks the fifth straight Saturday loss this season. In each series the Lakers have played this season, the team has split all five by winning on Friday before losing on Saturday.
Despite the loss, Lakers’ coach Jim Roque was extremely pleased with his team.
“That was our best game of the year right there,” said Roque. “I had no complaints with the effort for three periods. We were good defensively and had chances [offensively]. Our power play moved the puck well and got it to the net.”
Roque went on to say he couldn’t find any negatives in the loss.
“There was nothing but positives, except for the result,” said Roque. “That’s hockey. There’s going to be some nights where we win when we probably don’t deserve to win either. We’ll steal a game here and there. That’s usually the way it works throughout the season. It was a really good effort by our guys and full credit to their goalie for a great night for him.”
First-period goals by Cory Kane and Justin DeMartino helped the Bulldogs to the victory, while goaltender CJ Motte stopped 43 shots.
“CJ does deserve a lot of credit,” FSU coach Bob Daniels said. “On the penalty kill, I don’t know how many shots they had, but he killed a lot of pucks and got us some faceoffs.”
Daniels was referring to a major penalty given to freshman forward Dakota Klecha early in the third period that the Bulldogs were able to kill off.
“He got a little overzealous and that was a really tough penalty for us to take,” said Daniels. “What helped was when [Lakers forward Stephen] Perfetto took that hooking penalty. Instead of having to kill the full five minutes, we had to kill three minutes, so that was a bonus. The Lakers had us hemmed in.”
Daniels added that the fact that the Lakers scored three times in 57 seconds on Friday night was on his mind on Saturday night.
“[Friday] we had the one-goal lead and gave up the three goals and I hate to say that it was in the back of my mind,” said Daniels. “So I never really felt too comfortable.
“I thought it was a lot like yesterday in that either team could have won. CJ played terrific in net tonight. I’m pretty happy that we were able to bounce back and get a split. For us, that’s the first win on a Saturday night that we’ve had this year and the first win on the road, so it was a lot of firsts that we needed to conquer.”
Zach Sternberg scored the lone goal for the Lakers in the loss, while goaltender Kevin Murdock stopped 26 shots.
